The study is set out to contribute to an increased understanding of the structural problems that cause difficulties for the European Union to achieve common action, and contests the assumption that a permanent presidency of the European Council will solve these issues. This study describes the European Union as a meta-organisation and through organisational theory to understand the issue. It also reviews the original purpose of the European Coal and Steel Community to provide a historical understanding of the European Union as a meta-organisation. This study finds that the issues causing difficulties to achieve common action and to speak with one voice stems from inherent conflict of autonomy between the EU and its member states. The European Union’s misguided assumptions that increased authority through the appointment of a President will increase its decision-making abilities. As this research shows the European Union’s attempts to increase its authority is constantly met with member states unwillingness to give the increased authority at the price of their autonomy.

In a context of rising inequalities in the European Union, accompanied by a certain mistrust in the capacity of the European institutions to improve and secure the social conditions of the citizens, the question of ‘social Europe’ is more than ever source of debate and interrogations. Focusing on the revision of the Posting of Workers Directive, proposed by the Commission in 2016, this thesis analyses the way the European Ministers framed this revision and ‘social Europe’ more broadly during the negotiations.This work contributes to the existing research on elite framing and expands this field to ‘negotiations analysis’, a topic which has rarely been addressed. The analysis, based on Helbling’s frame categorisation, shows that workers’ social protection is a divisive issue which opposes two main groups: the proponents (high wage member states) and the opponents (low wage member states). The first group frames ‘social Europe’ as a way to restore trust in the European economic model, jeopardised by the downward pressure on wages and social conditions caused by low wage member states. On the other hand, opponents to the revision frame social policies as disruptive forces damaging the single market’s competitiveness and economic freedoms. They portray themselves as the victims of an unwelcome protectionism orchestrated by high wage member states.These findings question the future of ‘social Europe’, as they bring to light the unwillingness of both sides to rethink the European economic system. In the absence of a strong and positive ‘counter-narrative’, it seems that social policies will continue to beseen as hindering economic freedoms or as a mean to legitimise a system that has proven to be unequal. In that sense, the European social project did not yet reach the ‘status’ of the economic project and is still understood as a side issue that cannot challenge the status quo. If framed differently, social welfare in the Union could become a priority and take precedence over the fundamental freedoms that have been defined twenty-five years ago, in a very different socio-economic and political context.

Doctorat en sciences sociales, politiques et économiques / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The European migrant crisis showed how fragile the external borders of Europe were. In December 2015 the European Commission put forward a proposal to reinforce the current border agency, Frontex, to become the European Border and Coast Guard Agency to manage EUs external borders. The proposal included a stronger mandate for the agency toward member states and showed more integration toward an issue that has been historically sensitive, since border management is close to state sovereignty. This theory consuming study aim to give further explanation through liberal intergovernmentalism in how the member states were a big part in shaping the outcome of this chosen policy. The study is focusing on state actors as France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Hungary and Poland in how their preferences shaped the intergovernmental negotiations and give explanations if the border agency became more independent in its functions and toward member states.

This study aims to contribute to the debate on the influence of Europarties in the European Union decision-making process, and more precisely in the European Council. As a starting point the theory on Europarty influence in the European Council, by Jonas Tallberg and Karl Magnus Johansson, will be tested in order to assess its validity. There is a need to further research the role of the Europarties in the decision-making processes of the European Union, since the contributions to the field are scarce. The theory suggests that Europarties can be expected to be influential when 1) there is ideological polarisation surrounding the question of concern, 2) one party is dominating the European Council, and 3) when a Europarty is successful in mobilising and creating cohesion among its leaders. In addition, the Europarties have to be able to compete with domestic constraints that the members of the Council are bound by. The theory is empirically tested by a comparative case study on the outcomes of the Spitzenkandidaten-processes in the European elections in 2014 and 2019. It seems that the Europarties were influential and managed to get a Spitzenkandidat elected as Commission President in 2014, but less successful in 2019. However, the findings of the empirical study suggest that the Europarties were successful in mobilising support also in 2019, but a chain of events led to the fall of the Spitzenkandidaten-process in its current shape and the Europarties have most likely lost a part of their long-term influence.

In the cooperation between the EU and Ukraine since the EU-Ukraine AssociationAgreement was signed in 2014, the EU has relied heavily on discourse to project power. Theinvasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation on the 24th of February 2022 caused a severeescalation of the conflict that has ravaged Ukraine since 2014, and the reactions of theEuropean Union have been strong. But what has the role, or more importantly, thediscursively constructed role, of the EU been in the Ukraine situation before the invasion?Additionally, how has this role been legitimised by the EU institutions responsible for theunion’s foreign policy? This study offers a poststructuralist analysis of how the EU constructsitself as a more coherent and powerful actor in European politics, than it actually may be.Employing Jean Baudrillard’s theory of simulated power in a similar way to the study of theEU:s discourse with Serbia and Kosovo by Gashi Krenar, the analysis focuses on how theUkrainan national identity, and the conflicts facing the nation are discussed in official EUdocuments. Special attention is given to expressions of normativity and sovereignty, theambiguity of which may conceal more obscure meanings. The results I present are used as afoundation for my understanding of the EU’s discourse as constituted by a deliberatediscursive strategy of simulating power, a strategy that is used in very different ways in theyear 2014 and then seven years later, in 2021.

The Motor Group of the European Council was commissioned in the autumn of 1997 to prepare a proposal for a new European Bus and Coach Directive. In the beginning, most of the Member States did not have the accessibility requirements as their main concern; still a smaller network with actors from the National delegations from Britain, Germany and Sweden would influence the other National delegations in the Council group to finally agree to retain the requirement of accessibility of the Directive. Within the EU decision process, the European Disability movement acted as a strong player during the whole negotiation process using the proposal to a new Bus and Coach Directive as a tool to influence key actors to go towards a Directive with a strong approach for accessibility. Policy Transfer and Policy Transfer Network are used as analytical tools to understand and structure the transfer of the question of accessibility during the negotiation process. Actors understanding how the bureaucratic process works within the EU decision system have a chance to contributing for the changes in the directions they wishes for within a range of policy areas. The principal aim of the Directive was to guarantee the safety of passengers and to provide technical prescription in particular to wheelchair users. In the end it turned out to be one of the most successful achievements for the European Disability movement in history.

The aim of this paper is to uncover what has changed in the EU security field that caused the EU to decide that their new military treaty, PESCO, should be the first treaty that excludes NATO from its constitution. The purpose for this aim is to understand if a paradigm shift has occurred in EU’s security rhetoric in order to understand the general picture of the EU security research field on the day PESCO was officially welcomed. The European Council will be the main actor and subject of the thesis, where the press statements of select EU members along with the Council President will be analysed as data. The context behind their statements will be brought forth based on the content that they deliver in the statements, which will by default deepen the comprehension of the EU security situation on the day that those statements were made.

The United Kingdom (UK)’s transposition of the European Directive on motor insurance (the Directive) is shot through with provisions that fall below the minimum standard of compensatory protection for accident victims prescribed under this superior law. These expose third party victims to the risk of being left undercompensated, or recovering nothing at all. The author’s research has demonstrated that the handful of cases that had previously been perceived as isolated anomalies in the UK’s transposition of this European law are in fact symptomatic of a more extensive and deep-rooted nonconformity. His published articles over the past five years were the first to reveal the prevalence of this problem and the resulting lack of legal certainty. He has been the first to offer detailed proposals for reform, as well as fresh insights into legal remedies potentially available to private citizens affected by these irregularities. Sections 2 and 3 of this paper are a summary of the author’s views covered in his various articles and research into the causes and effects of this disparity. They explain that whilst both the UK and European Union’s legislature share a policy objective the different approaches to achieving that end have resulted in different standards of compensatory protection. Section 4 recounts the author’s empirical approach that led him to undertake the first comprehensive comparative law analysis in this field. Section 5 explains the original, if sometimes controversial, nature of the author’s case commentaries, articles and official reports proposing reform. Section 6 sets out the author’s contribution to legal knowledge and practice in this area. This includes his opinion, contrary to long established precedent, that the Directive is capable of having direct effect against the Motor Insurers’ Bureau.

Cette thèse de doctorat s’articule autour d’une question dont l’apparente simplicité masque une réelle complexité :Comment le Conseil européen est-il devenu une institution ?En effet, alors qu’il existait déjà depuis plusieurs décennies, le Conseil européen n’a été formellement considéré comme une institution européenne que depuis l’entrée en vigueur du traité de Lisbonne, le 1er décembre 2009. Ce constat juridique attire l’attention sur les raisons de cette consécration tardive, mais soulève de nombreuses questions aussi bien pour ce qui concerne les institutions dans l’Union européenne (UE) que pour l’ordre politique européen dont elles font partie.<p>Le dépassement du seul critère juridique et la prise en compte du temps long remettent clairement en question l’idée que le Conseil européen ne soit devenu une institution qu’avec le traité de Lisbonne et interrogent, entre autres, sur ce que signifie « être une institution » dans l’UE. Plusieurs questions de pouvoir fondamentales sont soulevées :Comment les institutions sont-elles crées et développées dans l’UE ?Le Conseil européen est-il une institution « supranationale intergouvernementale » ?L’ordre politique européen est-il un ordre politique autonome ?<p><p>Le développement de la recherche a procédé en 3 phases, pour lesquels les répertoires de codification juridique, politique et symbolique ont servi de grille d’analyse. En premier lieu, le temps de l’instituant, temps court posant les bases du temps long dans lequel se développe l’institutionnalisation, a été étudié. Il correspond au moment de l’incursion directe et explicite des Etats dans la sphère européenne. Puis, les évolutions et trajectoires respectives des différents processus de codification du Conseil européen ont été examinées, tout au long de son existence dans l’ordre politique européen. Enfin, l’omniprésence de l’interaction national-européen a conduit à observer les processus suivis par les « sous-institutions » du Conseil européen, dans la mesure où ils permettent d’expliquer son institutionnalisation dans l’ordre politique européen. Le couple franco-allemand et la présidence du Conseil européen ont ainsi fait l’objet de processus d’institutionnalisation propres, mais intrinsèquement liés à ceux suivis par le Conseil européen, et ont servis à déterminer les interactions entre les ordres politiques nationaux et l’ordre politique européen.<p><p>Cette recherche a notamment mis en évidence le fait que l’institutionnalisation du Conseil européen a principalement été réalisée sur le plan politique (au travers des actions des acteurs, des rôles qu’ils ont façonné et investi, de la stabilité qu’ils ont instauré par la répétition de pratiques, de convergences de vues facilitées par la pression du groupe, ou encore du respect de l’échelon national par la dimension supranationale), en étant partiellement soutenue sur le plan symbolique, tandis que le droit n’a très longtemps fait que suivre ces processus et n’est vraiment intervenu que pour reconnaître l’existant ou dresser un état des lieux du consensus en vigueur au moment où les circonstances appelaient des reconfigurations substantielles. / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished